


the weather outside is frightful

by astrolesbian



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Snow Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 08:43:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5779159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrolesbian/pseuds/astrolesbian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Babe, wake up.”</p>
<p>“Shut up,” Patroclus mumbled into the mattress, resisting the urge to whack Achilles with his pillow. “I’m <i>sleeping</i>.”</p>
<p>“It’s snowing, babe.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the weather outside is frightful

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know. this is really gay tbh i wrote it in 2 days

“Babe, wake up.”

The whisper was accompanied by an elbow in Patroclus’s ribs, and he answered it with a groan, rolling over onto his stomach. 

It was winter break; all noise before ten should be outlawed. He tugged a pillow firmly over his ears, which was effective in blocking out the noise, but awful at covering his ribs, and the elbow hitting them only became more insistent.

“Babe,” Achilles continued, slightly muffled through the pillow. “Check this out.”

“Shut up,” Patroclus mumbled into the mattress, resisting the urge to whack Achilles with his pillow. “I’m _sleeping._ ”

“It’s _snowing,_ babe.”

“Quit calling me _babe_ like you think it’s gonna get you anything you want,” Patroclus muttered, and Achilles flopped down next to him, and wrapped his arms around his middle. 

“It works, though,” Achilles said, and Patroclus could practically _feel_ him smiling.

“ _Ugh,_ ” he said, and rolled off his stomach, pushing himself up on his elbows. He blinked, blearily, at the window, and snow was indeed falling, already an inch high on their windowsill. Achilles was beaming, like a kid on their birthday. 

“Isn’t it cool?” Achilles said, already sitting up and looking perfectly awake. “They’re gonna shut down half the city if it keeps up.”

Patroclus, who had grown up in the north, thought this sounded stupid, but didn’t say anything about it. Here, it snowed every other winter, and even then it was only ever a dusting. The deep snow that had beed the norm in Patroclus’s childhood was like a fairy tale down here. More than an inch was enough to close schools and roads.

“It’s like five inches,” Achilles said gleefully.

Patroclus yawned. “Good.”

Achilles looked at him for a second, and then burst into laughter. “God, you’re cute when you’re all tired.”

“I’m always tired,” Patroclus pointed out. 

Achilles grinned. “Yep.”

“Shut up,” Patroclus muttered, but he had blushed, and he could see the grin, victorious, that spread over Achilles’ face.

“Smooth as fuck,” Achilles said, pointing at himself. “Am I right?”

“Kinda loses the charm when you brag about it.”

“Babe,” Achilles said, “that’s _part_ of the charm.” He was standing up now, looking ruffled in his pajama pants, hair a fluffy mess.

Patroclus snickered. “You look like a sheep.”

“Hey!”

“A cute sheep?” Patroclus tried. Achilles stuck out his tongue, and Patroclus snickered again, falling back onto the bed. 

“Aw, come on,” Achilles complained. “Get up! It’s a snow day!”

“Snow days,” Patroclus said, “are for sleeping, and that’s what I plan to do.” He pulled the covers over his head, to prove his point. 

Achilles pulled them off. “Please?” he asked, and he was doing the face, the one with the stupid, cute pout.

“God, you’re annoying,” Patroclus said. 

“Yes,” Achilles agreed, without hesitation. “Come on, get up, I wanna make a snowman. On the roof, maybe.”

“I hate that we have access to the roof,” Patroclus muttered. “You make so many questionable decisions.”

“That’s why you have to get up,” Achilles said, “so we can do not-questionable things.” He grinned. “Unless you count sex as questionable—”

Patroclus actually did throw the pillow at him, this time. “God, you’re annoying,” he repeated. “Fine.”

“Fine to the getting up? Fine to the snowman? Or fine to the—”

“All of it,” Patroclus said. “Asshole.”

Achilles just grinned, unapologetic, and tugged him out of bed and into the kitchen.

 

 

Achilles stumbled into the kitchen wearing hiking boots and his pajamas, with a waterproof windbreaker thrown on over them which was a truly awful shade of neon green. Patroclus paused, his spoon halfway to his mouth.

“You do know that’s not enough to keep you warm in the snow, right?”

Achilles examined himself. “It’s not?”

“Put on some jeans and a sweater,” Patroclus said. “Then we’ll talk.” He went back to eating his cereal, and Achilles went back into their bedroom.

Sometimes he swore Achilles really did not know how to take care of himself.

 

 

The next time he came out, he was wearing one of Patroclus’s giant sweaters, which fit Achilles pretty well, considering. He’d kept the windbreaker and the hiking boots, and Patroclus figured that was the best they were gonna get, and resigned himself to a cold Achilles later on in the day. As it was now, though, Achilles was practically vibrating with excitement, bouncing from one foot to the other.

“I’ve never seen so much snow at once before,” he said, gleeful. 

“I have,” Patroclus said. “It’s really not all it’s cracked up to be. I just hope we don’t lose power.”

“You’re no fun,” Achilles complained. “Come on, I got a ton of stuff.”

He held out a box, which contained, among other things, baby carrots and buttons from the sewing kit Briseis had left at their apartment the other day.

Patroclus took one of the scarves out of the box and wrapped it around Achilles, smiling fondly when Achilles rolled his eyes.

“I’m not gonna get cold, babe,” he said. 

“We’ll see,” Patroclus said, and tugged the door open.

 

 

“Holy shit,” Achilles said. “I’m so fucking cold.”

“Told you,” Patroclus said, but he was studying the snowmen they’d built; messy and weird-looking, but works of art in their own way. He tilted his head to the side. “That one kinda looks like my dad.”

Achilles slid his arms around his waist, and stared at the snowmen for a second. “Shit, you’re right.”

“Weird,” Patroclus said, and turned to kiss him.

Achilles kissed him back gladly at first, but pulled away after a second. “I feel like we’re kissing in front of your dad.”

“Yeah,” Patroclus said, and glanced back at the snowmen. “We should remake that one.”

“We can make it Bris instead,” Achilles suggested, his cold hands already moving from Patroclus’ waist to adjust the baby carrots on the snowman’s mouth. 

“Nah,” Patroclus said, “I have a better idea,” and threw a snowball at Achilles’ back.

Achilles turned around with a look of openmouthed shock on his face, and Patroclus hit it with another snowball.

“You _asshole,_ ” Achilles said. “Oh my God, I’m getting you back, I’m getting you back _so hard—_ ”

There went another snowball, and Patroclus’ hands shook from holding in his laughter. 

Achilles pointed at him, scowling. “This means _war._ ”

“Take me on,” Patroclus said. “I’m the one who grew up with snow, I’m a veteran of snowball wars.” As if to prove his point, he ducked out of the way of the first snowball Achilles tried to lob at him. “Come on, bet you can’t hit me.”

“Fuck you,” Achilles said, but he was grinning. A snowball whizzed by Patroclus’s head. “Quit moving!”

“What, I’m supposed to stand here and let you hit me?” Patroclus asked. “No can do, babe.”

“Fuck you,” Achilles said, but the words bubbled with laughter now, and he gave up throwing snowballs entirely to tackle Patroclus back into the snow.

Patroclus yelled and Achilles was laughing and they rolled across the snow together like kids, smacking into the unfortunate Patroclus’s-dad-shaped snowman and knocking it over. 

“Oh, fuck,” Achilles said. “He fell off the roof.”

“It’s a pile of snow, not a _he_ ,” Patroclus said. He peered over the side of the roof. The snowman was in a pile on the ground.

Briseis was there, too.

Patroclus waved. “Hi, Bris.”

“Do I even wanna know?” she sighed, gesturing at the remains of the snowman. 

Patroclus considered it. “No,” he said. “Probably not.”

“That’s fair,” Briseis said. “Come inside, I brought stuff for hot chocolate.”

“Cool,” Achilles said, leaping to his feet. “Last one inside has to do laundry.”

“That’s not fair,” Patroclus objected, but Achilles, like the track star asshole he was, was already gone.

 

 

“Nice of you to come over,” Patroclus said to Briseis, accepting her kiss on the cheek and unwinding his scarf.

“I figured either you would have been out in the snow all morning or your power would have been out,” she explained. “Either way, good time for hot chocolate.”

Achilles slurped his and grinned. “I love you so much right now, Bris.”

“Love you too, baby,” she said, “but not as much as Pat does.”

“Damn right,” Patroclus said, dunking some marshmallows into his own cup of hot chocolate. 

“Anyway,” Briseis said, “we only have a couple days left before classes start again, so I figured it was a safe day to hang out. The snow gave us all a day off from work or whatever.”

“We should go out again later and make snow angels.”

“We trampled all the snow on the roof, babe,” Patroclus said. 

“Or,” Briseis suggested, “we should stay in, and watch movies, and drink this hot chocolate, and make brownies later with the brownie mix I know you still have because Achilles borrowed it from me and never used it.”

“Yeah,” Achilles said. “Brownies. That sounds good.”

Patroclus snuggled into his boyfriend’s side and grinned. This was more like it.

“And go back to bed later?” he mumbled, lacing their fingers together.

Briseis wrinkled her nose. “Dude, gross.”

Achilles grinned wider, and kissed Patroclus’s nose. “Sure, babe,” he said. “But after Bris leaves.”

“ _Gross,_ ” Briseis complained, whacking them with the back of her hand. “Guys. I’m right here.”

“Mmm,” Patroclus agreed, shifting so he could reach out and take her hand, too. “Sorry.”

“Whatever,” Briseis said, tossing her head — but she was smiling, and Patroclus could see how soft it was. “What movie should we watch?”

“Big Hero Six,” Achilles said. 

“You always wanna watch Big Hero Six,” Briseis complained. “How about Legally Blonde?”

“No, snow days are for cartoons,” Achilles said.

Patroclus grinned again, listening to their bickering, and leaned back into the couch. He was probably going to fall asleep again, he realized, but he didn’t think he minded. It was a snow day, and he was with his two favorite people in the world, and they were going to eat brownies and watch movies, and it was gonna be good.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Achilles said. “We haven’t even started the movie yet, usually you make it halfway.”

“Mmf,” Patroclus said, and leaned closer into his side. “Wake me up when it’s time for brownies. You owe me for getting me up so early.”

Achilles kissed his forehead, gently enough that it felt like a whisper. “Sure thing, babe,” he said, and he sounded immeasurably fond, and Patroclus grinned, tugged a blanket over himself, and went to sleep, Achilles and Briseis bickering — quietly — in the background.


End file.
